Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [285]
“Ah … no.” Abernathy’s voice came slowly, reluctant with caution. “No, afraid I don’t. Not exactly.”
Not exactly. Great way to put it. Roger rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the stubble rasp under his palm.
“Let me ask you this,” Roger said carefully. “Have you ever heard the name Jamie Fraser?”
The line was utterly silent in his hand. Then there came a deep sigh in his ear.
“Oh, Jesus Christ on a piece of toast,” Dr. Abernathy said. “She did it.”
Wouldn’t you?
That was what Joe Abernathy had said to him, at the conclusion of their lengthy conversation, and the question lingered in his mind as he drove north, barely noticing the road signs that whizzed past, blurred by the rain.
Wouldn’t you?
“I would,” Abernathy had said. “If you didn’t know your dad, never had known him—and all of a sudden, you found out where he was? Wouldn’t you want to meet him, find out what he was really like? I’d be kind of curious, myself.”
“You don’t understand,” Roger had said, rubbing a hand across his forehead in frustration. “It’s not like someone who’s adopted, finding out her real father’s name and then just popping up on his doorstep.”
“Seems to me that’s just what it’s like.” The deep voice was cool. “Bree was adopted, right? I think she’d have gone before, if she hadn’t felt it was disloyal to Frank.”
Roger shook his head, disregarding the fact that Abernathy couldn’t see him.
“It’s not that—it’s the popping-up-on-the-doorstep part. That—the way through—how she went—look, did Claire tell you—?”
“Yeah, she did,” Abernathy broke in. His tone was bemused. “Yeah, she did say it wasn’t quite like walking through a revolving door.”
“To put it mildly.” The mere thought of the standing stone circle on Craigh na Dun gave Roger a cold grue.
“To put it mildly—you know what it’s like?” The far-off voice sharpened with interest.
“Yes, damn it, I do!” He took a long, deep breath. “Sorry. Look, it’s not—I can’t explain it, I don’t think anyone could. Those stones … not everyone hears them, obviously. But Claire did. Bree does, and—and I do. And for us …”
Claire had gone through the stones of Craigh na Dun on the ancient fire feast of Samhain, on the first day of November, two and a half years before. Roger shivered, and not from cold. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck whenever he thought of it.
“So not everybody can go through—but you can.” Abernathy’s voice was filled with curiosity—and what sounded vaguely like envy.
“I don’t know.” Roger rubbed a hand through his hair. His eyes were burning, as though he’d sat up all night. “I might.”
“The thing is …” He spoke slowly, trying to control his voice, and with it, his fear. “The thing is—even if she has gone through, there’s no way of telling whether, or where, she came out again.”
“I see.” The deep American voice had lost its jauntiness. “And you don’t know about Claire either, then. Whether she made it?”
He shook his head, his vision of Joe Abernathy so clear that he forgot again that the man couldn’t see him. Dr. Abernathy was no more than average size, a thickset black man in gold-rimmed spectacles, but with such an air of authority that his simple presence gave one confidence and compelled calm. Roger was surprised to find that this presence transferred itself over the phone lines—but he was more than grateful for it.
“No,” he said aloud. Leave it at that, for now. He wasn’t about to go into everything now, on the phone with a near stranger. “She’s a woman; there wasn’t that much public notice of what individual women were doing, then—not unless they did something spectacular, like get burned for witchcraft, or hanged for murder. Or be murdered.”
“Ha ha,” said Abernathy, but he wasn’t laughing. “She did make it, though, at least once. She went—and she came back.”
“Aye, she did.” Roger had been trying to take comfort in that fact himself, but there were too many other possibilities forcing themselves upon his consciousness. “But we don’t know that Brianna went back as far—or farther. And even if she did survive the stones